I’m a big fan of the Falling Skies TV show. Sure it follows the usual tropes and stereotypes that plague post-apocalyptic TV shows. ‘I don’t want to kill my zombie child’ or ‘we need to go to dangerous place X to get X item for X’. But I still love the show. The sci-fi plot set against a dark and gritty background made a pleasant change from my usual TV sci-fi outings. So when I got chance to play the game I was very keen. I had visions of a successful tie-in in keeping with The Walking Dead games. And then I found it was ‘similar’ to Xcom: Enemy Unknown. I’m an even bigger fan of Xcom so the chance to play it with skins and characters from Falling Skies appealed to me greatly. With the scene set and my hopes surprisingly high I loaded up the game.
Which I wish I hadn’t done. Falling Skies: The Game is ugly. Seriously ugly. It is just the worst looking game I can think of. To say it looks like a PS2 game is not an exaggeration. And I know looks aren’t everything, especially in a tactical shooter, but it really does just look so foul you can’t ignore it. I was actually glad when I saw a loading screen which has a still picture from the TV show on it just to see something that looked vaguely realistic.
There is no doubt at all that Falling Skies looked to Xcom for more than inspiration. Apart from a few visual changes it is exactly the same as Enemy Unknown. The cover system is the same, some objects offer half cover some offer full and movement is handled using a grid on the floor indicating an area you can move and shoot and area you can ‘sprint’ to and forgo firing your weapon. It is in every way a clone of Enemy Unknown. The abilities you have available to you are similar if not exactly the same. Even the upgrade trees for your characters follow the same pattern as those of Xcom. Although somehow at every turn Falling Skies is worse. It’s like it copies Xcom and then makes everything worse.
For those of you who haven’t played Xcom essentially Falling Skies is an isometric viewed turn based tactical shooter. You take a team of rebels of different classes and abilities to complete objectives. You might have to rescue soldiers, complete one time objectives (e.g. destroying a radio tower) or just kill ‘em all. You have very few options in the early game due to poor accuracy so initially you rely on your ability to flank enemies and use cover wisely. Later on you will acquire better weapons and abilities until you eventual become a competent Espheni (Falling Skies’ brand of alien invaders) killing machine.
But for a game that so obviously copies what many (me included) regard the best it does everything worse. It looks atrocious. There is none of the out of combat strategy that made Xcom so great. The only mechanics that are different are worse than Xcom’s. And unfortunately Falling Skies: The Game isn’t involved enough in its own lore to make up for the lack of just about everything else. It would basically have needed to be an entire season of the show to do this though.
As it is, between the combat you get forced ‘cut-scenes’ that explain what’s going on. Which isn’t much. It certainly isn’t anything fans of the show will be upset missing. It’s not a good Falling Skies tie-in and the game it attempts to clone is just so far ahead you would think this game preceded it by about 10 years. It’s impossible to forget you’re playing what is basically a broken version of a great game at all times.
Even the upgrade system hasn’t been fully explored. Levelling up, acquiring new recruits, finding parts and upgrading/building new weapons is far too simple. All too early it becomes pointless even having such resources simply because you have so many of them. There is very little strategy in any aspect of Falling Skies: The Game. This is particularly insulting when you consider the shameless level of borderline plagiarism used.
With a total lack of respect for the game it’s so ready to steal from Falling Skies still somehow fails everywhere Xcom succeeds. It seems impossible that it is so close to another game yet so far in all the ways that count. The visuals are just upsetting. Nothing feels like it had any time and attention given to it and it shows. There isn’t any meaningful interactions between the characters which leaves the game feeling totally disjointed from the TV show. There are no redeeming features that I can think of and I’d genuinely have been happier if I hadn’t played this game at all.
